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MAG Postmortem Interview

GameSpy: Was there research that went into it, looking into actual PMCs or real-life militias? I'm always curious about the research that goes into games, especially combat games, because sometimes there's travel or visiting things...

Ben Jones: Sadly, there wasn't that much travel associated with MAG. I wish there was. But we've done that a lot in the past for SOCOM, we've had guys go to Morocco and stuff like that. Actually, I was on a trip to Africa and brought back thousands of photos of reference for environments, a lot of stuff that we ended up using for S.V.E.R. You can see the rag-tag buildings, their slum-like buildings and stuff like that. So yeah, we did a little research there. But most of it came from online. We spent all the time during pre-production while we were figuring out our systems and all that stuff, we're all on the Internet looking and scouring for as much reference as we could possibly get. Some of that, like you mentioned, yeah, is looking at real-life PMCs, of course, because so much of what they have done dictates the story of MAG, fictionally. How far we could go, what were players willing to accept in terms of fiction. That played a big role as well.

GameSpy: Why did Zipper want to do a shooter on such a large scale? What was the goal with MAG when you started development, as opposed to previous games you've made?

Ben Jones: Well, the goal, I think, was to make the next generation of shooter games. When we ended up going down the FPS route, for us it was really, "How do we do this?" Well, one, we create an epic scale, and two, we bring in all these MMO elements that will really drive players to not only want to build out their character, but to create units that are really diversified and have to work together in order to succeed. That was the big primary goal, I think that's something that we accomplished. But the scale thing, that was really trying to do something different and make this big, massive multiplayer world. In order to do that, in a way that was unique, we had to pull back on the traditional smoke and mirrors techniques and actually create a world that was driven by players.

GameSpy: Was there ever a time that MAG was envisioned as an MMO? Because it does seem to have a lot in common with the genre.

Ben Jones: Yeah. We had a ton of elements that we scaled back that were like a full-scale MMO. That we had to pull back. Obviously, it's like any game development, a lot of things are determined by schedule, but also the course of the game. So for us, the game evolved over time and became more focused on the squad and working as a team, and less about the MMO elements. Really pushing your character down... Because you see what we've established, like in terms of our skill tree, right? Which is a very...

GameSpy: Yeah, it is very much like talent trees in an MMO.

Ben Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. We wanted to make sure that the players understood that. But you could see how grand that could have been, right? It could have been just insanely long and players are playing for hundreds and thousands of hours. But again, it all goes back into schedule and scope.

GameSpy: Yeah, a lot of games, as far as multiplayer shooters go, are different from MAG, but a lot of them these days seems super-focused on constantly rewarding the players and giving them unlocks. MAG, comparatively, does a lot less of that, and makes unlocks much more of a rare occasion. Leveling up is increasingly more important, much like in an MMO.

Ben Jones: Right. I think there, what we were really striving for is value. A lot of the other games you see on the market right now, it seems like they're focused for ADD junkies. While I do love those games, I think what's nice about MAG is that we reward you over a longer period of time, so that each of those things has a lot more impact. I don't have a million visuals popping up on the screen every two seconds telling me what I just did. It's a little more simple, you see those things through the world, and you get a kind of wrap-up at the end of the day. Just like in a real battle, you're not... If you're running through trying to attack a pillbox, you're not thinking about, "Oh, I shot the sniper that was on the right-hand side right before I incinerated the pillbox with a flamethrower and I got the Medal of Honor." You get the Medal of Honor at the end, and that's when you're thinking about all the actions that went into that. So that's what we wanted to portray with MAG.

GameSpy: So why is it that you decided it was really important for players to have only one character per faction, for their account?

Ben Jones: The biggest thing for us was getting a sense of factionalization. You felt like you were a part of a team. We really wanted to build that up. Of course, we give you the opportunity to change between PMCs and reward you for doing so when you go into veteran mode. But we were concerned about players jumping back and forth. If you look at the Shadow War, you're able to gauge at a glance the progress of each of the tournaments as it progresses. And we were concerned that players would see that, "Oh, okay, S.V.E.R. is about to win this contract, I'm gonna hop over and play as S.V.E.R. for as long as they have that until they're about to lose, and then I'll jump ship again." That, you know, I don't think that kind of action really leads to the goal that we had for players, which was to find a faction that they enjoyed and stick with it through thick and thin, determined to be a really good contributor for the faction that they're playing on.

GameSpy: Have you been happy with the way that the factions have rolled out? At this point I've noticed a pretty large amount of people playing S.V.E.R., which is not surprising considering there was a GameStop pre-order bonus associated with that...

Ben Jones: Right. So that was big. There's a lot of things that played into that. What's interesting is that throughout the beta, the factions were really balanced, between the three PMCs. And then for the first couple days of launch they were as well. But basically what happened is, we looked at GameStop pre-orders, we looked at the fact that S.V.E.R. was winning, so people look on and they say, "Well, if S.V.E.R. is winning I'm gonna go play with the faction that's winning." And because they were winning, they were earning more XP, more bonuses, getting access to leader positions quicker. So they built themselves up really quickly, and were dominating early on. But what we've seen in the last week, especially in the last couple of days of this week, is that the battlefield is leveling out. Right now Valor owns the Sabotage game type, and Raven owns Acquisition, and S.V.E.R. owns Domination. Whereas on the first day, S.V.E.R. owned everything. It's balancing out, and we think that as players continue to migrate and learn the system, and everybody kind of levels up and things even out, we're going to have a lot more back-and-forth.